Little Girls in Red
by GreyMajesty
Summary: Natasha Romanoff has seen many things.


Disclaimer: I do not own any of the recognizable characters in here, or anything Marvel. I apologize for poor translation. This is my creative interpretation, it does not follow the storyline but takes cues.

She is six years old, watching the snow fall outside the tiny compound window. Winter in Russia is cold and hard and unforgiving. Madame paces in front of them, elegant and deceptively approachable. Natasha thinks of her as a wolf, with the tendency to snap at the weaker girls when they do not prove themselves capable. This particular day, there are 27 others standing with her in a line at the bar. The ballet studio is cold and grey, the wooden bar worn smooth from countless hands clenching the wood for weeks on end. This particular day, there is something different in the air that makes them move slowly, with care, as though they were walking on a minefield.

"Take your positions." Their teacher stands stiffly before them, Madame just behind. Watching. Waiting.

"Begin."

Twenty eight girls begin to slide through their positions. Natasha tears her gaze from the snow outside and brings her feet together with the fluid grace she has come to know as second nature. The girl behind her stumbles, and Natasha can feel the collective gaze of the older women fall upon her. They go up into a retiré and stand for nearly a minute before sinking back down and coming to a rest, twenty-eight hearts racing with fear. The creaky old phonograph in the corner splutters out the last few notes of Tchaikovsky's Pas de Caracteré, notes wobbling in the chilled air. Natasha lets her gaze drift slightly higher than her laced slippers to see the older women conferring. There is a calculating pause, and then-

"At ease." Madame steps forward, and Natasha dares to meet her eyes for only a moment. There is something there that Natasha does not recognize, and she looks back at the ground.

"You." The girl behind her stiffens, and goes to the wall where Madame's finger leads. Three other girls go with her. They look back across the room at the others, and suddenly the twenty feet of space between them seems enormous. A man in a black shirt comes and takes the four girls with him, and Natasha can see a bulge of gun strapped to his side.

That night, there are four less pairs of handcuffs clipped to beds. And the dorm room is quieter than ever.

Several weeks later, they are led to a room with black silhouettes on the walls of men with white circles on their chests. There is a table of guns in one corner, their black sides gleaming.

"Go." A finger points at the table, and they each scrabble for a gun and take it gingerly in their small hands. The man in black is there, and he removes his gun, takes out the magazine, lays it on the table, grabs a new one, and clicks it back in in less than five seconds.

"You. Now." Natasha slips out the magazine and clicks it back in, mirroring his actions. The others do the same with varying levels of success. One girl attempts to cram the magazine in sideways and the gun jams. The man leads her over to a door in the side and murmurs something in her ear. She lets herself out. The rest of them are brought in front of the silhouettes and raise the guns to shoulder level. The door clicks shut in the sudden and eerie calm.

"Fire!"

The gun jerks in her hands, and there is a blast of sound as the bullet tears a path through the air and into the wall on the far side of the room, missing the target by a few feet.

"Sloppy." The man stands behind them. "Again."

He stands behind her, so close she can hear him breathing, and she raises the gun.

This time, she doesn't miss.

She no longer knows how old she is, and there are thirteen of them now.

Time is a fleeting concept here, marked only by the number of girls as they drop.

Natasha doesn't look out the window and watch the snow anymore. Instead she looks at the table before them and feels the burn of hunger in her stomach. On it is a single safety pin, a pen, a wristwatch, a fork, and a nail clippers. The Madame stands behind them, and Natasha can feel her gaze traveling through the thirteen girls and boring into the eyes of the people bound to the chairs. There are five of them.

"The first kill a predator makes is the most important. It severs the bond of dependency upon the parent and enables the young to survive. The strong must destroy the weak, and weed out the incompetent and pathetic members of the group. I give you your prey, and your fangs. And once you make the kill, you are then free to eat." She gestures to the table, then to the door. The girls all stare.

Natasha is the first to understand.

If she is to be a survivor, she has to do what all young predators do.

She approaches the table. The pin has rust on one end, and the pen is, upon closer inspection, only the outer cartridge and tip. She picks up the fork, and instantly all eyes go to her. One other girl comes up behind her, picking up the nail clippers, and Natasha moves out of the way and towards the people in chairs.

If she is to stain her hands, let it be a quick death for the prey, an honorable death.

The person closest to her is a man, gagged with a dirty rag. His eyes are a warm chocolate brown, and when she meets them she sees nothing but wild fear. Rabbit eyes, she thinks, and fingers the fork in her hand. She looks at the man once more. His face is rounded, and he has soft wrinkles along his eyes. There is a mole on his left ear.

The fork goes right into his throat.

Natasha ignores the sounds coming out of his mouth, muffled by her hand, and instead watches the blood until it begins to flow more sluggishly. His eyes become glassy and a last, slurping breath escapes his lips. Then his mouth drops open.

Natasha turns to Madame.

Madame points to the door.

She goes through to find an enormous table laid with fine china and silver, heaping plates down the center piled with Borscht and soup and Okroshka, ice creams and cakes. A man in a white apron stands in one corner. He steps forward and pulls out a chair for her.

"What would you like to drink, красные перчатки?"

She looks down at her hands to see blood staining her hands to mid-forearm in crimson droplets.

"Mint Kvass, please." She says, and folds her napkin neatly in her lap before smiling at him.


End file.
